Sanchez says he has votes to become next Providence City Council president

Providence City Councilor Miguel Sanchez announced Monday he has enough support to secure the council presidency come January, setting the stage for a progressive overhaul of City Hall government.

The council’s 28-year-old majority whip, first elected in 2022, said his potential leadership team would dovetail with Democratic candidate for mayor David Morales’ administration, should Morales win in November’s contest against Republican Dave Talan. Morales defeated incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley in the primary.

“Providence residents are facing enormous pressure from the rising cost of living, and we have a responsibility to deliver real solutions,” Sanchez, who represents Ward 6, which includes the city’s Manton and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods, said in a statement Monday.

Under his presidency, Sanchez said the council would work with Morales to “pass a rent stabilization ordinance, while continuing to address housing affordability, strengthen our public schools, invest in our neighborhoods, and expand economic opportunity.”

Ben Shanahan, Morales’ campaign manager, said in a text message Monday that the Democratic nominee for Mayor would embrace Sanchez at the helm.

“Rep. Morales is thrilled with the incoming council’s choice of Councilman Sanchez as its next president,” Shanahan wrote. “They’ve worked closely for nearly four years to deliver results for Mount Pleasant and neighbors across Providence. He’s eager to build on that partnership with Councilman Sanchez and the council to make Providence a city all our neighbors can afford and feel safe calling home.”

Sanchez would succeed President Rachel Miller of Ward 13, who announced in June that she would not run for reelection.

A decisive victory and a potential new chapter for Rhode Island’s capital city

He said his proposed leadership team would represent “all four corners of Providence” and include Ward 9 Councilor Juan Pichardo as president pro tempore, Ward 14 Councilor Shelley Peterson as majority leader and Ward 2 Councilor Jill Davidson as majority whip.

To maintain his current council seat, Sanchez will have to win his own race in the Nov. 3 general election, by defeating independent candidate Jorge Porras — whom he defeated in the 2022 election. Porras did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Sanchez won the Democratic nomination in September’s primary, amassing 601 votes, or slightly over 56%, to the 467 votes secured by his opponent and former Providence School Board member Jenny Mercado.

Housing justice organization Reclaim RI endorsed Morales for mayor in the Democratic primary along with eight council candidates: Miguel Martínez Youngs in Ward 1, Yulyana Torres in Ward 3, Justin Roias in Ward 4, Jackie Goldman in Ward 5, Sanchez in Ward 6, Pichardo in Ward 9, Althea Graves in Ward 12 and Annajane Yolken in Ward 13.

All eight candidates won, with Martínez Youngs ousting incumbent John Goncalves along the way. Yolken, who scored the Democratic nomination for the Ward 13 seat, was endorsed by outgoing president and Ward 13 leader Miller. Yolken will be unopposed in November.

Similarly, the Rhode Island Working Families Party went six-for-six with its slate of council endorsements: Martínez Youngs, Torres, Roias, Goldman, Sanchez and Yolken.

Both organizations were part of a broader coalition of progressive groups, unions and tenant advocates that rallied around Morales and council candidates who have promised to resuscitate the council’s signature rent stabilization ordinance which failed earlier this year.

The ordinance was introduced by Miller and drafted with the help of Reclaim RI. It sought to cap annual rent increases at 4% for a select number of apartments in the city, while allowing landlords to seek larger increases from a new bureaucratic body, the Residential Rent Regulation Board. The final version of the ordinance also exempted new construction from the cap for 10 years, with an extension to 20 years if a project met wage-based standards and hired a certain number of registered apprentices.

The measure passed the council in a 9-6 vote in April, and Smiley vetoed it almost immediately. A council vote to override Smiley’s veto failed to secure the requisite 10 votes.

Goncalves and two other councilors who voted against the ordinance will not return next year: Ana Vargas also lost Democratic primary, while Jo-Ann Ryan is term-limited. Ryan lost her own bid for Morales’ House of Representatives seat when she lost in the Democratic primary to challenger Amy Santiago.

The remaining three councilors who voted against the rent stabilization ordinance — Pedro Espinal, James Taylor and Oscar Vargas — are positioned to return next year. WPRI reported Monday that none of those three councilors voted in support of Sanchez’s leadership slate during a council Democratic caucus last week. Oscar Vargas abstained from the vote, while Taylor and Espinal did not attend the meeting. Ten Democratic council nominees backed Sanchez for president during the caucus meeting.

Sanchez told WPRI that Democratic nominees David Marshall and Brian Guzman abstained from the vote.

The council is all Democratic and has no Republican members. One Republican, Christopher Woodley, will face Goldman and independent Timothy Donahue in the race for the open Ward 5 seat in November.

The City Council’s election for a new president and president pro tempore will occur at its first meeting of the new year on Jan. 4, 2027, which is also when new council members will be formally sworn into office.